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| If the party affiliations were reversed there would be no end of “Republican deplorables don’t understand the science” |
My guess is that most are going to guess way high. In my case I knew the answer -- around 5% -- but friends I asked guessed from 10% to over 50%.
The chart above is interesting. In America, Democrats way overestimated the likelihood of hospitalisation: 41% of them thought over 50% would be hospitalised, and only 10% of them guessed the correct number (1% to 5%) whereas 26% of Republicans guessed correct; and way fewer guessed the over-the-top number.
Noah Carl at The Daily Sceptic talks, calmly, rationally, sceptically, about the possible reasons why in Why are People's Risk Perceptions So Skewed?
It also reminds me that in the wake of 911 people stopped flying. Because they had skewed threat perceptions. They associated planes with flying into skyscrapers. Many more people travelled by car. More people died on the roads than normal and far more than if they'd continued to travel by plane, despite the (tiny) risk of being hijacked by Islamic nutters.
People here in Hong Kong continue in ignorance of the threat of Covid to us here. We have zero Covid. Plus Covid is rarely caught outside. Yet people continue masking everywhere including outside. Because the government told them to months ago and hasn't changed its mandate. That's not following "the science". Unless the science is now "you never know" or "better safe than sorry", in which case I fear my fellow Hongkongers are going to be masked to the end of my life.
This morning I heard on Australia's ABC radio Canberra that children going back to school will be required to mask. That's despite the fact that Canberra is homing in on 99% vaccinated for the 12+. That the vaccine reduces likelihood of hospitalisation and death by 100 and 1000 times, respectively. And that children are at more risk of flu than Covid (both for sickness and death). So what, exactly, is the "risk" that's being mitigated by masking children? Not one of the media at this presser asked: what about children and their need to see the teacher's face, to see their fellow pupils' faces? There's research — that is to say, “the science” — showing that suppressing facial expressions by masking is harmful to children. But, no, all must be sacrificed to mitigate the tiniest of risks to the great god Covid.
And while "anyone can catch Covid" (of course, just as "anyone" can catch cancer), the age of those dying from Covid remains stubbornly high, including in Australia (median age 89). Here are the official numbers from Health.gov.au:
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| From US Centre for Disease Control via here |
Yesterday [4 October] I noted that, 18 months after the start of the pandemic, a sizeable chunk of Americans still dramatically overestimate the risks of Covid. In a recent poll, more than one third said the risk of being hospitalised if you’re not vaccinated is at least 50%.
Of course, you’d expect some people to get the answer wrong just because we’re dealing with a small quantity, and there’s always going to be some degree of overestimation. But many people were off by a factor more than 10. What accounts for this?
Interestingly, Democrat voters’ guesses were much higher than Republican voters’ – about twice as many Democrats said the risk of being hospitalised if you’re not vaccinated is at least 50%. This suggests a role for ideology.
Throughout the pandemic, the ‘Democrat position’ has been to support restrictions and mandates, whereas the ‘Republican position’ has been to oppose such measures. This is clearly visible in a plot of U.S. states by average stringency index. Almost all the ‘red’ states are on the left-hand side, while almost all the ‘blue’ states are on the right.
Given that partisans (on all sides) like to avoid cognitive dissonance, they tend to adopt beliefs that are consistent with their party’s platform. Since Democrat politicians have been busy imposing all sorts of restrictions and mandates, Democrat voters have adopted beliefs that imply those measures were justified.
Most survey respondents don’t know numbers like ‘the risk of hospitalisation for people who aren’t vaccinated’ off the top of their head. Instead, they probably make a guess based on all the relevant information they can recall.
Democrat voters, who’ve spent the pandemic consuming media like MSNBC, CNN and NPR, will recall numerous incidents of pundits saying that Covid is extremely dangerous, and we have to do whatever we can to stop the spread.
They will also recall that they were locked down for months, that their kids’ schools were closed, and that they had to wear a mask whenever they went to the grocery store.
Putting all this information together, they will tend to assume that the risk of being hospitalised from Covid is extremely high. ‘Why else,’ they might ask, ‘would there have been so many restrictions?’
Note: Republicans also overestimated the risk of being hospitalised from Covid, albeit to a lesser extent than Democrats. This indicates that people’s skewed risk perceptions cannot be blamed solely on the content of left-wing media (or the policies implemented in ‘blue’ states).
The psychological quirk that may account for people’s skewed risk perceptions has a name in psychology: the availability heuristic. As Steven Pinker notes, “people estimate the probability of an event or the frequency of a kind of thing by the ease with which instances come to mind”.
Because plane crashes always make the news, people tend to overestimate the risks of air travel. And they may overestimate the risks of Covid for the same reason.
Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve been treated to morbid ‘daily death numbers’ – but for only one cause of death. Perhaps if these figures had been reported for all causes of death, people’s risk perceptions would be slightly less skewed. (Or perhaps they’d just be terrified of everything…)
During a pandemic, we obviously do want people to take precautions; we don’t want them nonchalantly walking into a care home when they have a high fever and a nasty cough. Yet – contrary to what some in government seem to believe – we don’t want people to be utterly terrified either.
There’s been so much attention on people claiming Covid is “just the flu” that the media has largely ignored the other end of the spectrum: people who believe Covid is the bubonic plague!
We can agree it’s bad if people underestimate the risks. But it’s also bad if they overestimate the risks. We want them to have the right risk perceptions. That way, they can make informed decisions.
